-
Stormy Daniels took the stand at Trump’s hush-money trial Tuesday.
-
The adult-film actress stood 20 feet from Trump in court and swore to tell the truth.
-
Trump allegedly falsified records to hide an election-influencing, $130,000 hush-money payment to Daniels.
He calls her “horseface.” She calls him “Tiny.”
On Tuesday, these two arch-enemies — with a potential felony conviction at stake — faced each other for the first time in a decade at former President Donald Trump’s criminal hush-money trial.
“My name is Stormy Daniels,” the porn star at the center of the historic trial said as she swore to tell the truth while at the witness stand of a Manhattan courtroom, just 20 feet from Trump.
Daniels, whose real name is Stephanie Clifford, wore black-rimmed glasses and an all-black loose-fitting shirt and sweater as she took the witness stand.
Trump sat at the defense table, his posture slightly slumped. He looked down at the defense table, not at Daniels, as she began her testimony.
Daniels began her testimony by answering biographical information for the jury.
She told the court she moved out of her family home in high school because she had trouble living with her mother and that she started stripping in high school for money.
“Have you supported yourself ever since?” prosecutor Susan Hoffinger asked.
“Yes,” she responded.
Daniels told the jury she directed her first adult film at age 23.
“I was one of the youngest, if not the youngest, adult feature directors,” she said.
Daniels — and the $130,000 hush money payment that purchased her silence just 11 days before the 2016 election — is the reason Trump has been on trial in Manhattan since mid-April.
Prosecutors for Manhattan District Attorney Alvin Bragg say that Trump falsified 34 Trump Organization business documents throughout 2017, his first week in office, when he reimbursed then-attorney and fixer Michael Cohen for paying Daniels the hush money.
The business records — shown to jurors for the first time on Monday — disguised Cohen’s reimbursement checks as “legal fees,” hiding what was actually an illegal conspiracy to influence the 2016 election, prosecutors say.
Daniels is an adult entertainment entrepreneur who has capitalized on her connection to Trump, writing a book, participating in a controversial documentary, and embarking on a “Make America Horny Again” tour of strip clubs.
She and Trump, the then-Apprentice star, had sex one night in 2006, she insists, in Trump’s hotel suite during a celebrity golf tournament in Lake Tahoe — an allegation Trump vehemently denies.
In a now-deleted early Tuesday morning post on Trump’s social media platform, Truth Social, the former president fumed after he apparently found out Daniels would take the witness stand on Tuesday.
“I have just recently been told who the witness is today. This is unprecedented, no time for lawyers to prepare,” Trump’s 7:30 a.m. post read, adding, “No judge has ever run a trial in such a biased and partisan way.”
When asked by a reporter in the courtroom hallway why he deleted the post, Trump ignored the question and instead denounced the protests taking place on college campuses over the Israel-Hamas war.
Additionally, Trump again maintained that the payments to Cohen were for a “legal expense.”
“They marked it down in the books, the check was signed,” Trump told reporters before he headed into the courtroom. “And the other thing, this was approved by all agencies, everybody saw this, there was nothing being hidden at all.”
Before the jury was called in Tuesday, attorneys for Trump objected to Daniels “testifying about any sexual act.”
“We’re informed the witness today, the second witness, will be Stormy Daniels,” Trump defense attorney Susan Necheles told New York Supreme Court Justice Juan Merchan, adding that testimony about any sexual act would be “unduly prejudicial.”
Prosecutor Susan Hoffinger explained that there will be details in Daniels’ testimony about how the porn star “ended up having a sexual encounter” with Trump.
“In terms of the sexual act, it’s going to be very basic,” she added. “It’s not going to be descriptions of genitalia or anything of that nature.”
Still, Necheles said, “There’s just no need for any of those details here.”
“There’s real questions about the credibility of this woman,” Necheles said of Daniels. “This is a case about books and records.”
Merchan said Daniels has “credibility issues,” but that he was “satisfied with the representations that Ms. Hoffinger has made.”
This is a breaking story; please check back for developments.
Read the original article on Business Insider
